6.4 Cross-linguistic Syntactic Variation

Languages around the world have different ways of structuring sentences. This diversity in syntax shows up in word order, how phrases are built, and what grammatical rules are used. It's like each language has its own unique recipe for making sentences.

Understanding these differences helps us see how languages work and how our brains process them. It also challenges ideas about universal grammar and shows how language shapes thought. This topic connects to the bigger picture of how we understand and use language.

Syntactic Structures: Comparison and Contrast

Word Order and Phrase Structure

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• Syntactic structures vary across languages in word order, phrase structure, and grammatical categories
• Head-directionality determines whether heads precede or follow their complements (English: head-initial, Japanese: head-final)
• Languages classified as configurational or non-configurational based on word order rigidity and hierarchical phrase structure presence
  • Configurational languages (English) have fixed word order and clear phrase structure
  • Non-configurational languages (Warlpiri) allow freer word order and less obvious phrase structure
• Morphosyntactic alignment systems affect case marking and argument structure
  • Nominative-accusative system (English, Spanish)
  • Ergative-absolutive system (Basque, Dyirbal)

Syntactic Operations and Functional Categories

• Syntactic operations realized differently or absent in some languages
  • Movement (wh-fronting in English vs. wh-in-situ in Chinese)
  • Agreement (rich verbal agreement in Spanish vs. limited agreement in English)
  • Case assignment (overt case marking in Russian vs. covert in English)
• Functional categories vary significantly across languages
  • Determiners (obligatory in English, optional in Russian)
  • Auxiliaries (complex tense systems in English vs. simpler systems in Chinese)
• Typological features contribute to syntactic diversity
  • Pro-drop (subject omission in Spanish vs. obligatory subjects in English)
  • Serial verb constructions (common in West African languages, absent in Indo-European languages)

Language Typology for Variation

Classification and Comparison Framework

• Language typology classifies and compares languages based on structural properties and patterns
• Implicational universals reveal correlations between syntactic features
  • If a language has verb-final word order, it likely has postpositions (Japanese, Korean)
• Typological hierarchies offer insights into syntactic phenomena distribution
  • Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy predicts relativization patterns across languages
• Areal typology examines geographical distribution of syntactic features
  • Balkan Sprachbund shares features like postposed articles despite genetic differences

Quantitative and Diachronic Approaches

• Diachronic typology investigates syntactic structure evolution over time
  • Development of articles in Romance languages from Latin demonstratives
• Quantitative typology analyzes large-scale cross-linguistic data using statistical methods
  • World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) database for identifying global syntactic patterns
• Interaction between typology and generative grammar led to parametric approaches
  • Principles and Parameters theory explains variation through binary parameter settings

Cross-Linguistic Differences: Acquisition and Processing

Language Acquisition Implications

• Cross-linguistic differences influence order and rate of grammatical structure acquisition in first language
  • Earlier acquisition of subject-verb agreement in Italian compared to English
• Competition Model explains how cue validity and strength affect sentence interpretation strategies
  • Word order as a stronger cue in English vs. case marking in German
• Syntactic transfer in second language acquisition influenced by typological distance
  • L1 Spanish speakers learning L2 English vs. L1 Chinese speakers learning L2 English
• Critical Period Hypothesis for syntax acquisition challenged by cross-linguistic research
  • Late L2 learners achieving native-like proficiency in some syntactic domains
  • Heritage speakers showing incomplete acquisition or attrition of L1 syntax

Processing and Cognitive Effects

• Processing theories propose different strategies for native and non-native speakers
  • Shallow Structure Hypothesis suggests non-native speakers rely more on surface cues
• Eye-tracking and neuroimaging studies reveal effects on real-time sentence processing
  • Different gaze patterns for subject-object relative clauses across languages
  • Varied neural activation for syntactic violations in L1 vs. L2 speakers
• Cross-linguistic syntactic priming effects provide evidence for shared abstract representations
  • Priming between languages with different word orders (English-Korean bilinguals)

Cross-Linguistic Variation: Significance for Theory and Science

Theoretical Implications

• Cross-linguistic syntactic variation informs universal grammar vs. usage-based approaches debate
  • Challenges to innate universal grammar based on extreme syntactic diversity
  • Support for usage-based models from typological patterns and frequency effects
• Syntactic diversity challenges notion of a single, universal set of principles and parameters
  • Parametric variation insufficient to account for full range of cross-linguistic differences
• Comparative syntax refines formal syntactic theories by testing explanatory adequacy
  • Minimalist Program adaptations to account for language-specific phenomena

Cognitive Science and Computational Modeling

• Research on cross-linguistic variation provides insights into language-cognition relationship
  • Linguistic relativity effects in spatial cognition (absolute vs. relative frame of reference)
  • Cognitive universals in basic word order preferences
• Investigation of rare syntactic constructions reveals full range of possible structures
  • Pirahã challenging claims about recursion as a universal feature
• Computational models of syntax improved by cross-linguistic data
  • Enhanced parsing algorithms for diverse language structures
  • Multilingual machine translation systems incorporating typological knowledge
• Cross-linguistic syntactic research informs language evolution theories
  • Grammaticalization pathways across language families
  • Emergence of creole languages and their syntactic properties